1880 Franklin Sheen

The surveyors for both the Florida East Coast Canal Company and the FEC Railway came across a few recently-arrived families living an isolated existence. One of these surveyors, Franklyn Sheen of West Palm Beach, played an important role in the area's history -- whether inadvertently or on purpose, he gave the community its name.

One version of the story is that Sheen had a dinner of pompano with one of the local families and not wanting to forget the tasty fish's name and where he had it, wrote "pompano" on his map, just north of Ft. Lauderdale. Subsequently, this was taken to be the settlement's name.

Another version, published in the early 20th century by a Pompano resident, claimed that Sheen purposely named the settlement "Pompano" because only the fish that was "the best in the sea" was an appropriate name for the " the beautiful tract of land he had found."

Yet another account has Sheen eating pompano at a West Palm Beach restaurant with potential land investors when he decided to name the property being discussed after the fish.

Whatever the reasoning, and whether or not any one version of the story is factually true, there is no alternate account of how the name came about, and we do know that by the final years of the 19th century, there are written references to the small community of Pompano. The town was incorporated in 1908. The word “Beach” was added on June 16, 1947, when the settlement along the Beach known as Pompano Beach was annexed by the Town of Pompano.

Courtesy of the Pompano Beach Historical Society. All rights reserved.